XVIII 

 THE SWAN 



" With that I saw two swannes of goodly hewe 

 Come softly swimming downe the lee ; 

 Two fairer birds I yet did never see ; 

 The snow, which does the top of Pindus strew, 

 Did never whiter shew." 



WHEN I speak of " the swan," I mean the 

 bird called by ornithologists the mute 

 swan (Cygnus olor), the swan of the poets 

 that warbles subhme and enchanting 

 music when it is about to shuffle off its mortal coil, the 

 tame swan of Europe, the swan that used to take 

 Siegfried for cheap trips down the river, the swan that 

 ** graces the brook," the sv/an of the " stately homes 

 of England," the swan I used to feed as a youngster 

 on the Serpentine, not the black fellow in St. James's 

 Park, the swan that hovers expectantly in the offing 

 while you are having tea in a boat on the Thames. 

 This is, of course, by no means the only species of swan. 

 There are plenty of others — white ones, black ones, 

 black-and-white ones — for the family enjoys a wide 

 distribution. Nevertheless, I propose to confine 

 myself to this particular swan. I have excellent 

 reasons for doing so. As it is the only swan with which 

 I have had much to do, I can, like the Cambridge Don 



99 



